


Loss Ficlet: May 1, 2017

by missclairebelle



Series: Loss (Ficlets) [16]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 16:37:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14000223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: Claire leaves home to celebrate Jamie's birthday in little more than a trenchcoat and a smile.





	Loss Ficlet: May 1, 2017

**Author's Note:**

> On This Episode of Sunday Fluff: Plot, what plot? This ficlet is not a tasteful fade to black with door closed, lights off. I totally get it if this kind of thing is not your jam. It usually isn’t mine, but then this just happened (aforementioned “smut.doc”) when @candyland3772 sent me this prompt:
> 
> Hi!! LOVE Loss!!!!! Since you are taking prompts, how about some smut-filled birthday plans for either of them? Could be interesting to read. I think the idea of ficlets for this story is fantastic. It lets us see bits and pieces into their lives. You're a wonderful writer, keep it up :D :D
> 
> As for the result: I’m not totally mad at it (although my feeling about posting this could best be described as: 'Dafuq u doin’, babes?’). 
> 
> HARD NSFW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
> 
>  

******Loss (Modern AU)**

**May 1, 2017**

I was not normally the type of woman who chose to leave home in thigh-high stockings, underwear, and a trench coat. But I had decided I could be that woman for one Monday afternoon.

I spent the ride to Jamie’s office, fingers curled into the rough seat covering, terrified that the driver would get into an accident.  

In fact, as the taxi pulled away from the curb in front of our flat, I had a vivid picture in my mind’s eye of the worst case scenario. I pictured, in full technicolor, the taxi smashed into a thousand sharp bits of smoldering rubble, my body mangled in my birthday sex outfit. I envisioned myself having to stare up at my colleagues wordlessly (obviously unable to speak and protest: “ _this… getup is for my boyfriend’s birthday!_ ”) in the A&E.  They would stare right back at me, whispering to each other: “ _Dr. Beauchamp, yes… that’s CLAIRE… in the panties…._ ”

Closing the green curtains around my bed and stepping away, their thumbs would work furious magic to compose text messages to others in the hospital.  Doctors who I had stood next to ( _saving lives and talking medicine_ ) would cut my battered body free from the lace and stockings with surgical scissors. 

“ _Such bad judgment_ ,” they would say as the licensing authority stripped my license to practice medicine away.

When the taxi pulled up to the hulking glass monstrosity where Jamie’s advertising agency was located, I tipped the driver handsomely with a pleading look ( _forget I was ever here_ ) and went inside.

Jamie’s office was on the fourteenth floor.  The ride to his floor, shared with four men in suits who all got off on different floors, felt as though it took forever. My mind was swimming from the air freshener in the taxi, the stop-and-go traffic, the lift and drop of the ascent to the fourteenth floor, and… oh, just the fact that I had followed through with my plan to make a trip to Jamie’s workplace in little but lace and glossy lips.

Jamie had just recently moved into a corner office and taken on his own assistant. It would have all been very impressive, not to mention a source of pride for me, had I not been sweating along the small of my back and shaking like a leaf. I approached the reception desk around the semi-circle of glass-walled offices and introduced myself, plainly. (“ _I’m Claire Beauchamp, here for James Fraser._ ")

“ _Jamie_ is on the phone. It will be just a minute. You can have a seat, Ms. Beauchamp.”  Jamie’s assistant, Laoghaire, was young, blonde, and pretty, and apparently a little smitten with him in a sweet way. 

I sat on the edge of the leather chair just around the corner from Jamie’s office, trying to keep my coat down and my legs together. My thighs ached from the effort of keeping myself from sinking into the comfortable embrace of the chair. I was afraid that if I sat too comfortably it would be patently obvious to anyone walking by just how little I was wearing under the coat.

I thanked Laoghaire, smiling politely, and carefully rearranged the trench coat over my lap.  I concentrated on the inscription on the hulking black door into his office ( _J. FRASER, Head of Account Strategy_ ) and willed my vision to quit swimming. I concentrated on just breathing - even in and out, in and out, from my core.

After a few minutes, Laoghaire cut into my yoga breathing. “He is quite busy today, Ms. Beauchamp.” I could tell she wanted to add something like “ _perhaps another time?_ ”  But she didn’t.

I smiled again, no teeth and tight lips, not in annoyance at her but at myself for even trying to sit down. I should have stayed standing, arms crossed over my stomach, and waited.  “I understand.”

When Jamie finally came out of his office he was preoccupied by a thick red file folder. I stared at him, waiting to catch his eye.  I heard Laoghaire say my name with an emphasis on _Ms._ , indicating with her head. Jamie sighed, handing the folder to Laoghaire.  

He started to speak before he turned to me -  

“Claire, I dinna have ti-” he was scribbling a broad signature on something that Laoghaire was holding out for him.

I rose from the chair easily, smoothing the coat down over my thighs. 

His words and his slight exasperation appeared to dissolve at the sight of me. 

The electricity practically crackled up Jamie’s spine and he straightened.  He clenched his fists at his side before unclenching and shaking his hands, rubbing the palms on his pants.

“C’mon in.”

I had rarely seen James Fraser speechless and I felt a streak of womanly pride tear through me at the effect I was having on him. My earlier reticence (the second-guessing from the backseat of the taxi and the lurching ride up to the fourteenth floor) and nervousness all liquefied inside of me when he looked me up and down. He held the door to his office open for me.

“She’s pretty,” I commented absently, walking past him and trailing my fingers across the sleeve rolled up to the middle of his forearm.

“Ye ken she’s not my type at all.”

“I know… I know your type.” I walked, in my best approximation of a saunter, to his desk. I bit down on my lip when he said, “ _Aye, ye apparently do_.”

Jamie stood there for a moment, holding the door and staring at me.

“I’ll be just a second,” he said before pursing his lips. I just smiled and nodded, feeling for the first time like I wasn’t totally insane for showing up at his office. Jamie turned back and I watched him walk to Laoghaire’s desk. 

I redirected my attention to inspect the photographs on his desk.

There was a frame with a photograph of Ian, Jenny, Maggie, and young Jamie. It was a picture taken almost a year earlier at Ian’s birthday party. Jenny was almost nine months pregnant, glowing and swollen and tired, and had her arms around her sunburned kids. Ian’s arms were around them all. 

He had two frames with pictures of me.  In the first, I had my tongue out, one eye closed, and was holding up a peace sign. My hair was a disaster of curls and all over my face, only one small clump held back in my fist. We had been searching for a shower curtain (Jamie having vetoed the flowery one from my previous flat and thrown away his own before we moved in together). After a contentious battle over white linen and black, Jamie said he wanted to memorialize our compromise ( _pale grey with pleats_ ) with a picture. 

I had a harder time placing the second photograph – the when, the why. From the background I recognized the market that was around the corner from our flat. I was looking at Jamie over my shoulder with parted lips, looking like I was about to tell him something mundane (like “ _don’t forget laundry soap”_ or “ _do those pears seem ripe?”_ ). Jamie had a habit of snapping candid pictures with his phone, but I had no idea he did anything other than take them to antagonize me. I had proof of the contrary in my hand.

The final frame had a picture of the two of us. It was a selfie in front of the London Eye. My arms were extended to their full length in front of us attempting to get an angle that would capture both of our faces and the wheel. Jamie’s lips were pressed into my cheek and my mouth was hanging open in a surprised scream.

Something surged inside of me only for a moment before releasing. That he spent hours here every day, snapshots of our life as a couple behind glass, looking back at him while he wrote emails or brainstormed or held meetings or sat on the phone, made my breath catch.

I had known that Jamie had the picture of me making a stupid face and holding up a peace sign (I had printed it as a joke when he commented a few months earlier that he needed a picture of me for his desk). He had declared it was perfect.

I had known about the picture of his family.

I wondered, though, when he had the other two done up. Our trip to London had not been that long before; he must have had the photograph printed shortly after our return.  The other, I didn’t even remember. I was fully clothed and out in public, but it was intimate in a way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on – perhaps the intimacy of it stemmed from mystery of why he chose it.

The light on Jamie’s phone blinked red and the screen said he had twelve missed calls and three voicemails. A grid of sticky notes with scribbles and highlights and the same neat handwriting covered the bottom quarter of his desk.

I let my eyes linger on one of the notes, a grocery list in Jamie’s neat, all caps handwriting:

_eggs_

_TP_

_juice (oj & grapefruit) – _my heart pulled a little, knowing the grapefruit juice was for me –

_stuff for Sat. dinner (prawns & veg?)_

_Weetabix_

_apples_

I took a pen and wrote “ _yes to prawns & veg” _on the bottom of the list with a smiley face.

On another note he had written: _Call C re: theatre tix - working 12 May?_

He hadn’t called me and I made a mental note to try to swap shifts out for May 12th.

On the bottom I wrote: _I’ll make it work, xx_.

I ran my fingers over the lid of his closed laptop and a stack of printed papers with numbers, foam core boards with slogans pinned on them and mock magazine advertisements for cars and sports drinks and private label whisky.

On a notepad he had a substantial list of notes for a meeting, dated for _1 May 2017 - Perth Distilleries Strat. Mtg._ @ 1530. It was only twenty-something minutes from starting.

I was allowed only the slightest pang of guilt about interfering with his schedule when Jamie interrupted my snooping. He pressed a button on the wall and black blinds descended from the ceiling along all of the windows looking from his office into the reception area. 

“I’d ask Laoghaire to hold my calls, too, but it’d be obvious what I was up to in here. I dinna think we should be bothered much.”

“Hmmmm.  Happy birthday, Mr. Fraser,” I said, turning away from his desk and giving him a once over. “How does it feel to be thirty-two?”

“I ken what yer doing, Dr. Beauchamp.”  He sat on a leather chair, an identical twin to the one in the reception area that had so desperately tried to claim my virtue in front of his entire office.

“Not Dr. Beauchamp. Claire or some silly pet name, please.” I bit down on my lower lip, toying with the belt on the coat. I put my mind to muddling through my best Scottish accent ( _read: not a good one at all_ ) and said, “I dinna ken what ye mean, Laird Broch Tuarach.”

“Jesus, Claire.” His voice was willow thin and he was tapping a senseless rhythm against his leg with his fingers. “I ken what yer up to.  And ye dinna need to get all dressed up and make sexy faces to be alluring.”

I walked back around his desk and stood a few feet away, slowly untying the belt of my coat. “You dinna like my coat?”

“Not one bit.” His eyes darkened, his voice more substantial now. 

“Pity.” I began working at the tortoise buttons that ran, double breasted, down the front of the coat. The look in his eyes made me bold, fearless, and wanton. I wanted, _needed_ , him to know that was how I felt. “It was expensive.”

“I’d wager that it was,” he responded, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. He folded his hands as if he were about to pray and just watched me, like he was daring me to make another move.

“I went to Burberry just to buy it for yer birthday… I’m sorry you dinna like it.”

“Quit with the accent and just lose the coat.”

“Demanding on your birthday, aren’t you?” I clicked my tongue and glanced over my shoulder to make sure the blinds made us truly invisible. I thought for a moment about teasing him that shutting the blinds was just as obvious as telling his assistant to hold his calls, but was shaken back into reality when he cleared his throat as if to say, ‘ _will this happen today?_ ’

I let the coat fall and brought my hands to my hips. “Do you like this better?”

“ _Fuck_.” His voice was a sigh and the appreciation as obvious. “Where in the hell have you been hiding _those_?”

I tested the black lace straps over my shoulder and angled a hip towards him, doing my best impression of something I had probably only ever seen in movies. “The bottom drawer… under the stretchy pants I wear when we spend all weekend eating takeaway and sweets on the couch.”

He rolled his eyes at that and leaned back, crossing an ankle over his knee. “Ye have the worst timing ever and I have the worst luck ever. I have a meeting that is not cancelable in twenty minutes.”

“Not even cancelable for the birthday boy?”

“ _Fuck_ ,” he said again.  He held up a finger and beckoned me to come over to him.  I left the trench coat pooled on the floor and took deliberate steps towards him, crossing my feet in front of one another, only vaguely worried about twisting my ankles in the too-high heels.  He leaned further back in the chair and I stood in front of him, my knees on either side of his knees. “Those stockings, Claire…”

He stared up at me, palms flat on his thighs.  “You can touch me, you know.”

Jamie just shook his head.  I placed one knee between his on the chair and leaned forward, resting the length of my body against him. I ran my tongue over my lips, locked my eyes on his, and lifted myself.  He breathed in sharply when I laid my palm flat between his legs.

“Seems I have my answer. You like what’s under the coat better than the coat itself, then?”

“What in the hell has gotten into ye? I fucking love it.” His words were jumbled and he sighed once they were out. I touched the outline of his growing arousal through his pants and he groaned, winding his fingers into my hair. “Really… I have a meeting, Claire.”

“So you’re saying I have to take care of myself?”

The sound that came from him sounded half-strangled, half-animalistic, and fully Scottish. “Is that what’ll happen if I send ye home?”

I clicked my tongue again and kissed the corner of his mouth, holding my hair to the side of my neck.  When I pulled back I wiped the small smudge of gloss from his lips with my thumb.

“These are really very unpractical panties, Jamie… they just tie in little ribbons on the side… see?”  He brought a hand to each hip and rested them over the slippery black bows that held the scrap of lace to my body.

“Aye, hardly worth wearing, are they?” He lifted my weight off of his body easily, and I found my footing.  “A verra impractical purchase, Claire.”

His hands did not leave my hips when he leaned forward and pressed his mouth just above the tie on my right hip.  He did not lean back when his lips were finished. Instead, he just held me there, his warm breath on my skin, his fingers sinking into my hips.

“God, yer skin… 'tis like pearl.”

“I have a lot of it, too...”

“Aye, I ken ye do.” 

As much as I felt like I had been in charge, his touch and words made me want to sink down to him again, spread myself over the length of his body, and submit to whatever the storm in his eyes was conjuring.

“What did ye think was goin’ to happen if ye showed up here like this?” he asked against my stomach, dragging his lips lazily across the edge of lace spanning my hips. 

My fingers tangled in his hair and I couldn’t stop my head from tipping back.  “Honestly?”

“Aye.” He pressed his mouth just above the tie on my left hip now and let his hands wander down until they were cupping my ass.

“That you’d bolt the door, unwrap your present… that’s me by the way, if you don’t get it… I’m the present. I’d maybe be on my knees for a while. And then you would proceed to bend me over your desk.”

“Christ, Claire,” he groaned. Holding me firmly in place, his mouth found me through the lace. I whimpered, my legs shaking slightly. He stood, his hands coming to my waist. I knew his intention even before he said: “ _up_.” I wound my legs around his waist as he lifted. He easily shifted his hold on me and again fondled my ass like he had never touched it before. I clung to him and lost both of my shoes in the process. I pressed my mouth to his forehead as he walked us to his desk.  He held me up with one arm while he pushed papers and his laptop aside unceremoniously, using only enough care that the computer did not go to the floor.

“I dinna have time to do this properly…”

“Then why ever in the world did you put me on your desk?” I slipped my fingers into the waistband of his dress trousers, pulling him closer. “It seems silly to waste your energy carrying me around if you don’t want to follow through.”

“What I _want_ to do is to take ye right here on my desk.”

“Then do it, Jamie.” My throat closed at the promise of the words and the flick of his eyes down my body.  As if by instinct, my thighs fell open to him with a sigh.  I squeaked when he grabbed me behind the knees and pulled me closer to the edge of the desk. My hands did not look like my hands as they worked at his belt and then moved to the button and zipper of his trousers.  He was in my hand, ready, before I realized that he had the panties untied and in a crumpled ball of lace on the floor.  Jamie groaned and his head fell forward, his lips and teeth finding my earlobe.

Despite the promised interruption of his meeting, Jamie took a long moment to move a hand down my belly, fingers splayed and warm.  He kept moving until his fingers reached their final destination; they were lazy and slow inside of me, curling and testing my flesh.

“Ye feel so good, Claire,” he murmured, his thumb featherlight on my clit.

“Jamie, do it now.  Don’t be gentle.”

He shifted me again, lifting a leg around his waist and angling my ass just right.  When he slid into me he let out a sigh and pressed his lips into the skin behind my ear. The way he sank into me was familiar and I adjusted to him almost instantly.  His fingers pressed round circles into my flesh, the touch promising to leave marks on me. I didn’t care; I _wanted_  those reminders to pepper my body for the next week. 

Jamie’s mouth ghosted over mine, his lips moving but not making contact. I could feel my stomach climbing into my throat when he groaned “ _look at me_.” When I did, I allowed him to catch me; his kiss was hard – all teeth and tongues. When we broke apart he muttered words of love and need and want – Gaelic words I didn’t understand, punctuated by ones I did. The words tumbled from his mouth like a devotional.  I swallowed the curse words that bled from him like an open wound.  The gash in his self control - the words, the set of his brows, the blooming purple press of his fingers - was profane and lovely.

The rhythm of our flesh together was practiced and deliberate, each rise met with a fall, each crescendo building and building almost impossibly.

When Jamie licked his thumb and snaked his fingers between our bodies, his wrist against my thigh, I tipped over the edge. My eyes fought to close and I fought back, melting and jerking against him. Mouth open and breath caught in the back of my throat, stomach knotting tightly, I felt my face contort and a groan start to brew in my belly. The groan threatened to release itself as a full-fledged cry.

Laughing, Jamie clamped a hand over my lips, his fingers salty and warm. He trapped the sound inside of me before we could learn what it would become.  His next words were punctuated by the constant joining and parting and rejoining of our bodies: “I know I’m verra good at this… but shut up, Sassenach.”

The moment of levity was short lived and his concentration returned, dropping like a mask to cover his laughter. His teeth caught his lower lip and his exhales shortened, coming now through his nose. I shook against him, still clenching him and urging him deeper.

 _I love you. I love you. I need you. Jamie._  

After another moment, everything in the world disappeared except the moist sound of our bodies slipping against each other and the greedy sighs in the back of his throat.

I had come completely undone at the seams and was just hanging on, feeling drunk on him.

Jamie finished with one more movement of his hips, his body stilling and pressing harder and harder into me. I dragged my fingers down his face and throat to his shoulders. I hung on, finally allowing my eyes to close. My limbs were loose and silver light burned like acid behind my eyelids. I could feel his humid breath against the hollow of my throat – _in, out, in, out, in again, and out one more time –_ but I could not hear it. My ears were drowning in the white noise in my mind.

I dug my fingers into his shoulders when he slipped free of me. I held onto him loosely as he cleaned and rewrapped me like a present. His dry lips kissed the retied bows of the panties as he stood to full height and offered me a hand to stand.

“I’m going to give ye my gym shorts… I can tell ye left home without thinking about the aftermath.” I looked down – my stockings had torn free of their belts. I took his gym shorts gratefully, cinching them as tightly as possible and looking absolutely ridiculous. I struck a pose, smirking, and went back behind his desk.

He stood feet away, watching me move about his workspace as he righted his clothes and attempted to do something with his well-fucked hair.  

I reached for the picture frame we had knocked over onto a pile of foam core storyboards. The photograph was the one from the market where I was frozen in time - mid-sentence and looking over my shoulder, bewildered. It still seemed like an odd choice to me. It was slightly blurry and Jamie’s finger made a dark splotch on the corner where it rested partially over the lens.  

“We have so many lovely pictures together. Why did you pick this of all things?”

I held it up. He finished tucking shirt in and he took it from me, looking down at the photograph with a far off expression in his eyes and his lips set.

Returning the picture back to its rightful spot, he took my face in my hands. “Because I love seein’ ye unguarded, no cares, just existin’, Claire. When I dream about ye, that’s what ye look like.”

I kissed him then, recognizing at once the reason the picture felt so intimate.

“Happy birthday, Jamie,” I whispered when I pulled back. 

He smiled. “Yer insane for comin’ here today like this.”

“Aye, I am. And you are equally insane.” I smiled at him again, wiping the slight shimmer of lip gloss from his mouth. “Come home to me when you can.”

* * *

 

  



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